‘Omicron cases to rise in next few weeks in Telangana’ says study

The rapidity of the Omicron driven Covid pandemic witnessed in South Africa is expected to be replicated in Telangana and across other parts of the country. Just like South Africa, a significant and rapid rise of Omicron infections is expected here in the next few weeks, which will be followed by a quick drop in cases with fewer hospitalisations and mortality, says SERB National Science Chair, IIT-Hyderabad and founding member of SUTRA model of pandemic projections, Dr M Vidyasagar.

Despite the rapid rise in positive infections, due to higher transmissibility of the Omicron variant, the real-world data from South Africa and even in European countries clearly indicate that hospitalisations and deaths will be fewer compared to previous Covid waves.

On November 15, South Africa reported 200 Omicron infections and by December 15, it had 25,000 infections, a rise in cases by a factor of 100. “We will see a similar rise in Omicron infections in India but we don’t have to worry or panic. Despite the rise in Omicron infections, there was no corresponding rise in hospitalisations and per day deaths remained only at 45 in South Africa,” Dr Vidyasagar pointed out.

“If we look at data and project accordingly, there will be a definite rise in Omicron infections, which was the case in South Africa. However, South Africa has already



peaked and cases have started to drop significantly. Another strange but very positive development in South Africa was that there was no rise in deaths although positive cases jumped, which should augur us well,” he pointed out.

When compared between Omicron and Delta, according to reports, there was a 70 per cent drop in hospital admissions in South Africa, 60 per cent in Scotland, 45 per cent in the UK. At the peak of the Covid second wave, India reported over 4 lakh Covid infections per day, which led to a rise in hospitalisations. The total load during the second wave on hospitals was around 6 lakh patients.

“However, this time around, our projections do not indicate that scenario will be repeated. There will be less pressure on hospitals and unlike the Delta wave, we are also expecting hospitalised patients to recover quickly,” he said. Compared to Europe, people in India are far better placed in terms of better seropositivity through natural immunity and vaccination.

“We must understand that Europe is not going to get out of the Covid pandemic easily because they have not taken the same level of precautions like we have been taking in the past few months. I don’t think we should be comparing ourselves with Europe because there the situation is different due to less seropositivity,” Dr Vidyasagar added.